


Aquababe

by gin_eater



Series: Deep Sea Divers [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Humor, flangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:39:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3772024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gin_eater/pseuds/gin_eater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set at some unspecified point in the LWM Noughties. Cruella's fifth husband comes with a few accessories, one of them distressingly short. Ursula ... assists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aquababe

**Author's Note:**

> Other snippets from this universe can be found at my tumblr (same name) until I can be assed to upload them here. I write them all out of order, anyway, so while they reference each other, it doesn't really matter where one begins reading. Also I've never been to the NY Aquarium, so what you all get here is a mash-up of Sea World, the non-alcoholic portions of Epcot, and the brief perusal of an online pamphlet map. Quali-tay.

"No. Absolutely not."

The man known -- on his public tax records, at least -- as Richard Feinberg, Dick to his friends and dick to his enemies, heaved a long-suffering sigh. He was used to his wife's petty obstinacy -- truth be told, he usually found it endearing -- but he'd spent more than four times as long being wrapped around his daughter's little finger than he had under Cruella's thumb and, well.

Susan had asked and he had caved like an Appalachian coal mine.

Everyone has their faults.

He'd known Cruella would fight him on this. There was no love lost between his current wife and his youngest daughter, and there hadn't been for the entire six years he'd been married. Susan thought Cruella was a poisonous gold-digging snake, and Cruella thought Susan was ... _darling._ A word that apparently had many more definitions than Richard had been aware of prior to the day they'd met.

"Cruella," he tried, "please, be sensible. Susan's really going out on a limb, here--"

"With a noose around her neck?" Cruella asked hopefully.

Richard gave her a scolding look. "I mean it. It's her way of showing that she's serious. That she wants to trust you."

Cruella rolled her eyes. "Rubbish. It's her way of wanting me to suffer, is what it is."

"How will you be suffering? Alexis is wonderful child, very well-behaved. And she _likes_ you."

" _Likes_ me? I scarcely know the child!"

This was very true. The greatest interest Cruella had ever shown in her step-granddaughter had been the day after she was born, and then only because she'd mistaken Richard's exclamation of "Alexis is coming home today!" to mean that a new car would soon be delivered in their driveway.

He suspected she'd never completely forgiven him for that unintentional deceit.

"Which is exactly the point," he pressed on. "Susan wants Alexis to grow up with grandparents, _plural._ She doesn't want whatever enmity is between you two to keep her daughter from growing up with the emotional security of a complete family unit."

Cruella stared at him. "Oh my god, it's finally happened, hasn't it?"

"What?"

"You've finally gone senile."

"Cruella ..." Richard sighed again. "Look, it's one day. It's not going to kill you--"

"You can't know that."

"--and it would mean a lot, to Susan and to me and to Alexis."

"No. It's not going to happen, Dickie. End of story."

Richard's expression turned chopfallen. He shook his head, and shook the ace out of his sleeve.

"Fine," he surrendered. "I guess I'll just have to tell Andrea to take it back, then."

Cruella looked at him sideways, instantly alert. "Take what back?"

"Oh, just that little sable number I saw you eyeing in Neiman Marcus the other day. You know, the one we didn't have time to get before Chuck and Alice's dinner party."

Cruella looked deeply conflicted. "You bought that?"

"I paid for it. Technically, Andrea did the buying. Said she had to fight a Hungarian dowager for it. Knocked the old bat's dentures right out of her face, but it was the last one they had."

Dear, sweet Andrea, always willing to go that extra mile.

Cruella folded her arms, and her mouth worked in that adorable way it did when she found herself stuck between a diamond and a hard place.

"... Just the one outing?"

Richard folded his hands in a show of humble acceptance. It was his signature victory move.

"Just the one."

"Remember, it's a promise!"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

"X marks the spot," Cruella mumbled.

"Pardon?"

"I said it makes me so hot, darling, when you're all magnanimous and diplomatical." She smiled and looped her arms around his neck. "What did I ever do to deserve you?"

"Nothing good, I'm sure," he said playfully.

"Hmm, no," she agreed. "Good is something I have undoubtedly _never_ been."

Richard decided to try his luck.

"One more thing?" he added.

Cruella pulled away, already scowling. "What?"

"Take the car."

She relaxed. "Well what else would I take, you silly man, the ruddy subway?"

"No, I mean have Stuart take you in the Rolls."

"But why? I love driving."

"And I love you, but my granddaughter is too young to die. Besides, do you _really_ want a car seat cramping the Panther's style?"

His wife considered this, and sighed. "No, I suppose not."

Richard pecked her proudly on the forehead. "That's my girl. Susan will drop her off around nine, and then the two of you will be off to the aquarium."

Cruella reared like a horse before an impromptu rattlesnake.

"The aquarium?!" she repeated, aghast. "No, no no no, darling, no, I can't go to the aquarium!"

An incredulous chortle escaped him. "Why the hell not?"

"Because--" She stopped short, casting about for a reasonable excuse. " _Because._ I hate fish."

"You had lox for breakfast this morning."

"I hate _living_ fish! Slimy, scaley little ... and tentacles! You can't trust anyting with tentacles, darling, believe me."

Richard shrugged. "It's where she wants to go. Susan said she's in a Finding Nemo phase."

"Couldn't I just take her sailing or something? That's on the water."

" _The aquarium,_ " he insisted. "Everything's behind glass, anyway. I promise you won't have to touch, talk to, or in any capacity associate with any oceanic inhabitants contained therein, aside from looking at them."

"That's what you think," she grumbled as he left the room. "Patronizing bastard."

 

* * *

 

Cruella thought she'd known Hell. One would think being a De Vil would lend a certain perspective on the matter, if not at least a mild immunity to its effects.

She'd prepared as best she could, taking a Percocet and topping off the flask she kept strapped to her right thigh in case of emergencies. She'd wanted to bring along a dog or two -- one of the Border Collies, perhaps, in case the child required herding -- but had had to nix that idea when Richard reminded her of the ridiculous legal restrictions that differentiated between official service dogs and ordinary dogs who happened to provide a service. But she was wearing Dior and silver fox and her eyebrows were cooperating to a phenomenal degree, she had to hand it to them: they knew what was on the line.

Alexis Joanna Madison Feinberg-Kilduff, aged five-and-two-thirds, however, was not acquainted with the line. In all probability, she still couldn't draw a straight one, nor successfully color inside a connected array of them. Certainly she had no grasp of the impending disaster that could result when two of them, always intended to lead staunchly parallel lives, suddenly angled on a collision course.

What she _could_ do was ask questions. Lots of them. More than she could count. Eighteen, at least, since the Rolls had left the drive and merged onto the Belt Parkway.

"Why does your hair look like that?"

Big brown eyes stared with insolent curiosity across the two-feet-wide expanse of supple leather interior that separated them in the back seat of the car.

Cruella wondered if it was too early to uncap the flask.

"Because I'm a Chimera," she deadpanned, already feeling the onset of a headache as she stared unseeingly out the passenger's side tinted window.

"What's a Chi ... Chim ..."

"Chimera. A merger of two or more genetically distinct creatures resulting in a single but immiscible whole. It's also a kind of shark, but as far as I know I have no pelagic ancestry."

"Oh." The child looked down, frowning, then back up. "What's your favorite kind of fish?"

"The devilfish."

"What's a devilfish?"

"An octopus."

" _That's not a fish!_ "

The protest was sudden and shrill, and Cruella winced as it pierced her skull like the wire hanger that had failed to pierce Susan's womb.

"My mommy bought me a book about the ocean and it says, it says octopuses are ceph-uh-low-pods." The word had been studied at length, and was pronounced with great reverence and care.

"Does it now."

"Can I touch your eyebrows?"

" _No._ "

In the driver's seat, Stuart let out a cough that sounded suspiciously like a snicker. Well, there went _his_ Christmas bonus.

"Are we there yet?"

"Yes, get out."

There was a click of automatic locks before the door handle could even be reached.

His next _two_ Christmas bonuses.

" _Liar,_ " accused the little girl. "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"

Cruella rubbed at her temples with thumb and forefinger. "That was _one time,_ and it wasn't my fault. We'd all had a great deal to drink and Mal ... _missed._ "

"Huh?"

"You'll understand when you're older. Once you've learned to pick the lock on your father's liquor cabinet."

"You're so weird, Grandma."

Cruella wheeled on her like a heat-seeking missile passing a cancer ward. " _Do not_ call me that!" she growled. "Especially not in public! _Especially_ not today!"

The child looked at her, nonplussed. "Then what am I s’posed to call you?"

"Call me ... _Aunt_ Cruella, if you must."

"But you're not my aunt! Aunt Karen's my aunt!"

"Well I'm a damn sight closer in age to your Aunt Karen than I am to your grandfather." According to her nearly legal driver's license, anyway.

"Mommy says you married Grandpa because he's old and you think you'll get all his money when he dies."

"Mummy only says that because _she_ wants all of your grandfather's money when he dies."

Alexis was silent for a moment, and then, to Cruella's horror, her little face began to pucker and her eyes began to well.

"What?" she demanded. "What's wrong?"

"I don't want Grandpa to die!" wailed the five-year-old.

"Oh for the love of ... your grandfather is _not_ going to die. He shares a cardiologist with Dick Cheney, for heaven's sake; the man could keep a bacon-choked walrus from succumbing to a coronary." More was the pity. Damn golf and cholesterol medication and red meat limited to twice per week.

Alexis' sobs subsided into little wobbles of her chin. "You promise?"

"Yes, yes, I promise, now stop your sniveling, it's unsightly."

"What's unsightly mean?"

"Unattractive. Not pretty. You may as well be spilling your dignity down your cheeks. It does nothing but compromise your agency as a female."

"But Daddy gives me whatever I want if I cry."

Cruella snorted, unsurprised. "I'm sure he does. But what would you do if you wanted something and Daddy wasn't there to give it to you? Who would you cry to then?"

"Mommy."

"And if she wasn't available, either?"

"Grandpa."

"And if _he_ wasn't?"

Alexis thought about this, and shrugged.

"Ah, see, there's the rub," said Cruella. "There will always come a time when you'll have no one to rely on but yourself to get the things you want. Crying is a patch job at worst and a petty manipulation at best, and should only be used as a last recourse after fear, cunning, and seduction have failed. --Not necessarily in that order."

The little girl absorbed this timeless wisdom with intense concentration. That, or she needed the lav. Children were usually housebroken by five, weren't they?

Cruella checked her phone. Thirty minutes down, thirty still to go until they reached Coney Island, barring construction. And there was _always_ construction.

Damn Susan. Damn Richard. Damn this slow, stupid, perpetually crumbling world.

"Why do you like octopuses?"

Cruella glanced irritably at her diminutive companion.

"I just do, all right?"

"My book says they're really smart."

She snorted. "Not always."

"And they have three hearts. Do you think that means they can love three times as much, like the Grinch?"

Cruella stared resolutely ahead. "The Grinch didn't love anything."

"At the end he did! At the end, his heart grew three sizes, and he could lift a whole entire sleigh!"

"Well, bully for him."

"If octopuses have three hearts, I think that means they can love more than people do."

Cruella shook her head. "Hearts have nothing to do with it, you idiot child."

"Hey!"

"Well they don't. Even true love doesn't prevent people from heartless actions, and neither does being heartless prevent people from feeling love. --Unless the heart's been ripped out, of course, but that's usually a horse of a different color."

The child frowned at her. "You talk funny."

"I do not. I have excellent diction. You lack a decent vocabulary and knowledge of common idioms."

"I'm _five._ "

"That's no excuse. When I was your age I could already speak English, dog, cat, rabbit, robin, _and_ badger."

"What?" The eyes got impossibly bigger. It was like looking at a doped-up fawn. "No way."

"It's true. I could speak everything, at the end."

"At the end of what?" the blitzed Bambi inquired.

"My time in the Enchanted Forest, of course."

The child scrutinized her with the same suspicion she had directed at Richard dressed as Santa Claus the previous Christmas (and rightly so; he'd looked ridiculous, and the pillow kept sagging past his belt, it was nearly obscene).

Finally she huffed and settled back in her carseat. "I don't believe you. If you were _really_ from an enchanted forest, there's no way you would wanna come _here._ "

"Not _an,_ darling, _the._ And that's the first intelligent thing you've said all morning. You're quite right, I didn't want to come here, but a pair of hypocritical, egocentric, _incomparably_ cruel royals stole something very dear to a friend of mine and sent it here, and in trying to get it back for her, I got sucked in right along with it."

"All alone?" Spoken by a five-year-old, the words seemed underlined with an abyssal horror.

"No, not alone. Another ... friend," Cruella settled, partly because there was no telling who Stuart might be charged with reporting back to, and partly to avoid tiresome questions about the bees and the bees to a sheltered larva of WASPs, "ended up being pulled in, too."

"Could your friend talk to animals, too?"

"She could, but not _all_ of them, like me. But she did have other talents." Talents Cruella very much missed, but the insertion of prehensile appendages into any talk of romance, however vague, with a five-year-old probably qualified as some form of child abuse.

"Was she pretty?"

Cruella looked appalled. "Darling, she was _more_ than pretty! She was powerful. Tall and strong and elegant and merciless. She ate pretty for breakfast and picked her teeth with the bones."

Alexis grimaced. "Ew."

"Ew nothing, she was fabulous. A real queen."

"I like princesses."

"You also like Dora the Explorer, so forgive me when I say your aesthetic values leave something to be desired."

The child pursed her lips, but it seemed that no amount of insult would deter her. Cruella felt a slight, grudging respect for that.

"So did you find it?" asked the fawn. "The thing that was stolen?"

The former witch looked askance at the lambskin seat back in front of her. "Oh, we found it, all right. But we had no way to keep it safe, and so we had to give it up again just as quickly. I wouldn't even know what it looks like anymore."

"What about your friend? Where is she now?"

Cruella shrugged. "Some repugnant little fish bowl in Brooklyn, last I checked." In person, four months ago, to be precise.

"You mean you're not friends anymore?"

"It's not that we're not _friends,_ we just ... run in different circles these days, and don't see each other very often. We have different jobs."

"You don't have a job!"

"You don't know your grandfather like I do," Cruella muttered. "Trust me, darling, just being a woman in this world is work enough."

Alexis licked her lips and worried them together. "Do you think you'll ever go back? To the Enchanted Forest?"

"I hope so. Someday."

"If you do, can I go with you?"

Cruella laughed outright. "God, no! What use would I have for a garrulous little girl with no taste and the verbal lexicon of a middlingly trained parrot?"

Said little girl scowled. "You're _mean._ "

"Oh, well spotted, darling!" It was genuine praise. "Don't you just hate me? Don't you want to go home, right now, back to Mummy?"

"No! I have to find Nemo!"

_Blast,_ Cruella inwardly swore.

"If you go back without the thing you tried to find, will your other friend be mad at you?"

"Probably," Cruella admitted. Probably she would end up on a spit and roasted over a bed of dragon's fire, if Maleficent managed to get her into a chokehold first. "She always did have a temper, and it was a very important thing."

"But that wouldn't be fair! It wasn't your fault it got lost."

Cruella rolled her eyes. "Please. 'Fair' is a concept that's make-believe even in fairytales. There is no justice in any world, darling: it's just a prettier word for blame. The quicker you accept that, the better off you'll be."

"But if it's not true, then why does everybody pretend it's so important?"

"Because it makes them feel better. Because if they acknowledge that things aren't fair, they'll have to confront the possibility that nothing they do may ever be enough."

"Enough for what?"

Cruella shrugged. "For anything. For ending up where they want to be, or with whom. For seeing to it that the people who hurt them are hurt themselves in equal or greater measure."

"That doesn't sound very good."

"It's not. Most true things aren't. That's the thing about truth: it often inspires the most fantastic lies."

"But ... how do you tell the difference?"

"You don't. You just ... start to notice patterns one day. Which is why it's important to always do everything with _style._ Once the cloth's been cut, you find your niche and you embrace the hell out of it. Then, even if you're _démodé,_ at least you'll always have been authentic, which is the very definition of style, and as close to being both truthful _and_ honest as one can get."

"Mommy says Gwyneth Paltrow has style."

"Gwyneth Paltrow has all the style and substance of a water biscuit, and Mummy's opinion on the matter holds even less weight than Mummy does after a salty meal."

"Mommy doesn't eat salt."

"Yes, I know, that's why Daddy lunches with Mrs. van der Veen twice a week."

"I eat lunch with my friend Cara at school."

"Not like that, you don't."

 

* * *

 

This wasn't so bad, Cruella thought after the first hour or so. Boring as sin, but they'd made it past the mud flats and marshes without incident. Every so often, Alexis would coo and exclaim over this or that. It didn't seem to matter to her what Cruella did, so long as she was relatively present.

Cruella wasn't sure why or precisely when she allowed the lull to become a full-blown false sense of security. It was one of villainy's more vexing bad habits -- the assumption, against all precedents, that everything would go according to plan.

"Grandma, look, a devilfish!" Alexis excitedly squeaked, little hands pressed to the glass of the tank as a small red octopus crawled obliquely by.

" _Grandma?_ "

And there went the forgotten other shoe.

Cruella closed her eyes and counted to five. She'd warned Richard, she'd _warned_ him -- tentacles were simply _not_ to be trusted.

" _Step,_ " she clarified. "She's not mine, she was just ... inflicted upon me for the day."

Ursula smirked from where she leaned against the glass some five feet to their left, arms folded, coveralls cuffed to the elbows and blonde waves pulled back in a loop at the nape of her neck. She looked awful, tired and untidy -- and still Cruella's stomach seized up at the sight of her; still her blood surged high against her skin, pulling like the tide toward the moon.

The weariness, the dishevelment, it was all just tarnish on gold, and Ursula herself a treasure no less valuable for having been buried.

"Whatever you say, _Granny._ "

Of course, the market value of gold had been dropping of late.

"Ursula, you are gambling with your life," Cruella warned her.

"Oh, in this case, I think I'll take my chances."

"If you _ever_ breathe a word of this to anyone--"

"What, are you kidding me? This is prime blackmail material. I'm saving this for something _good._ "

Cruella refused to blush in front of the child.

"Don't you have some fish to feed? Some glass to squeegee?" she asked.

Ursula simpered at her. "Lucky for you, my break just started."

"Can you show us where Nemo is?" Alexis piped up from hip-level.

Ursula raised an eyebrow at Cruella, who rolled her eyes, then crouched down to address the child.

"I can do better than that," she said. "I can introduce you to _everyone._ Nemo, Marlin, Dory, Gill, Bruce ..."

"Really?" Alexis squealed in happy amazement.

"Really," Ursula promised.

Cruella's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How do you know all those names?"

Ursula shrugged, but didn't look at her. "Everyone knows all those names."

"I don't," Cruella persisted. "You've seen it, haven't you? You've watched her horrid little fishy film."

"It won an Academy Award!"

"So did Gwyneth Paltrow; that doesn't mean anything."

"It--" Ursula's jaw clinched. She inhaled sharply through her teeth. "It was relevent to my interests, okay? And anyway, don't think I didn't catch you reading the back of the Homeward Bound video box back in '94."

Cruella spluttered indignantly. "I did no such thing!"

"Oh, please. We may have left with Groundhog Day but you were making puppy eyes at the children's section until we pulled out of the Blockbuster parking lot."

"Pfah! I think your memory's gone the way of your wardrobe, darling. _If_ I happened to glance at the buggery thing at all, it was with the hope that their journey might lead them from a fur farm to somebody's closet."

"Yeah, right." Ursula looked down at Alexis. "Your grandma's full of it, anyone ever tell you that?"

"My mommy says that all the time," Alexis confirmed with solemn innocence. "She uses the S-word, though."

"Oh does she indeed?" Cruella said archly as Ursula cleared her throat to conceal a laugh. "Would you like me to tell you what Mummy is full of?"

"Wine?" Alexis guessed.

Ursula lost it.

Cruella's esteem for the child rose incrementially. At least she was objective in her observations.

 

* * *

 

They had just made it through the jellyfish forest, where Ursula explained to Alexis with remarkable patience about the toxins contained within its tentacles and how they differed in their effects on both humans and different types of marine life, when an insistent tugging at the hem of Cruella's dress drew her attention downwards.

"Gran-- _Aunt_ Cruella, I have to go to the bathroom."

Cruella blinked at her. "Okay. You have my permission, go ahead."

"Come with me?"

"What the devil for? It's right over there!" She nodded at a prominent sign marked RESTROOMS.

"Pleeeeeease?" the little girl whined, dancing in place. "I can't go by myself."

"Well that's a matter for your physician, darling, there's nothing _I_ can do about it."

Ursula rolled her eyes. "For god's sake, Cru, just go with the kid. She just wants you in there with her."

"In the actual cubicle?" Cruella frowned, looking between the two of them.

Ursula huffed an exasperated sigh and took hold of the child's hand. "Come on, I'll take you."

Cruella watched them go for a moment, then shrugged to herself and turned back to the jellyfish, idly toying with one end of her stole.

It was rather soothing here. A little too air-conditioned for her tastes, but relaxingly dim in the cool blue light of the tanks. It was easy to get lost in what was happening beyond the glass, uneventful though it was. One could quiet one's mind and let it wander.

Cruella's led her, quite naturally enough, to Ursula, and what she might read in the movements of the fish and crabs and coral here. Gossip? Lovers' quarrels? The sale of contraband plankton to inner reef roe?

Was this peaceful for her, or painful?

Stupid question. Of course it was painful. Like admiring a Barney's window display when the store was closed. But why would she torture herself like this? Cruella had spent her whole life running from where she'd originated; to volunteer for it to be daily thrown in her face was a way of thinking around which she couldn't quite wrap her dichotomous head.

But then, she supposed, it wasn't all that different from the way she couldn't stop sneaking glances at the sea witch herself. The way she'd be sneaking more than glances, if the child wasn't with her now. Cruella sometimes drove aimlessly as a means of stress relief, and more than once she had found herself nearly past the first exit for Queens before the name would spark a realization of where she was going, and why. The pull was just too strong, the desire too deeply ingrained; try as she might, she could never keep away for good. It was like being attached to an elastic band: the further apart they grew, the more powerful the snap when they came together again.

Ugh. This was why she didn't do "soothing." Every wander turned into a stalk, and without specific prey to focus on, all she ever ended up hunting was herself, flushing feelings like pheasants from the thorny thicket of her heart in which they very wisely hid. Soft things that were not furs.

Weak things that would not keep her warm when they died.

Why did everything have to be so difficult here? It had all been so simple, in the Forest. Their connection had been sweeping and near-instantaneous: they'd christened one of Mal's guest rooms the night of their very first meeting, for crying out loud.

Then again, after the Forest had come the sea -- or rather, Ursula's first of numerous returns to it. But that was the life of a villain, wasn't it? It wasn't as though one could leave one's kingdom indefinitely and expect to be welcomed back with fearful deference and kowtowing. Left to their own devices for too long, people tended to get ideas above their station. It was a damned demanding job, the maintenance of a wicked regime, and Cruella had been enormously proud of her own exquisite taste to have landed the affections of not only a monarch, but a goddess.

Well, semi-landed. Because Ursula did leave. Because Cruella's affections had never been enough to tempt her to stay.

The irony.

No, not irony -- the hellish imperative for revenge. It's Villainy 101, isn't it? Payback. Retribution. Comeuppance for the caustic disappointment that had sealed Cruella's throat and banked the fire in her breast when she'd watched Ursula gaze longingly one too many times out at the harbor from the edge of the docks, engulfed in the stench of dead fish and diesel and still wishing it could be hers. Literally cut off from their world and cast adrift in this one with only each other to cling to and _still_ Ursula reached for something else, all but pushing Cruella's head underwater in the process, or so it had felt at the time.

Well, two could play at that game, and in it Cruella counted herself among the most skilled of opponents. Let Ursula wallow in industrial waste pining for her precious fish. Let her exhaust herself trying to make ends meet in a menial job, reduced to frumpy brown coveralls and a mold-infested efficiency flat, tinned tuna for one on a laminated card table under forty watts of unflattering flourescent light. Not Cruella. _Never_ Cruella, and especially not here. The playing field was even now, and here _she_ was the siren; here _she_ was everything and more, good enough and better, sails unfurled and if Ursula was the anchor she had forgotten to weigh then she would still sooner let the chain rip through her hull than willingly climb down to stagnate alongside it in its watery grave.

As long as she could deep-six the feelings that flooded through the holes, she could keep afloat. If enough time lapsed between visits, if she could hoard enough shiny distractions, and pass out before the maudlin stage of drunkenness set in ...

"We're back!" a squeaky voice chimed from behind her, like opening the blinds on a hangover.

Cruella cringed.

"Well it's about time, darling," she griped. "I was beginning to think you'd been bagged and drowned or something, but I knew I couldn't be that lucky."

Ursula looked briefly at Cruella as if she'd lost her mind, then turned to Alexis.

"Don't mind your grandmother, she gets tetchy when she's hungry."

"No, she's always like this," said the impudent fawn.

"That's because she's always hungry. Look at those pitiful little stick arms. Those chicken legs."

Alexis giggled.

Cruella glowered at the pair of them. "If the two of you are _quite_ finished insulting me, it is in fact time for lunch -- providing of course there's more on offer in this wretched place than brine eggs and flake food."

Ursula smirked. "The food court's this way."

"Oh, a food court, how quaint." Cruella gestured imperiously down the hall. "Lead on, Madam Chum."

"You know," the former sea witch said to Alexis as they walked, "if you really wanna piss her off, call her Posh Spice. She hates that."

"I hate _you,_ " Cruella muttered.

She could only see the back of Ursula's dowdily ponytailed head, but she could sense clear as day the self-satisfied smile on the other woman's face.

 

* * *

 

"The drinks menu here leaves a lot to be desired," Cruella complained, picking sullenly with a plastic fork at her battered cod.

Ursula rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'll be sure to bring that up at the next staff meeting."

"See that you do."

Alexis mimed leapfrog with her popcorn shrimp on the table. "Is this how Daddy and Mrs. van der Veen eat lunch?"

"No, darling, that would require you to not be here. Unless you mean the shrimp, in which case yes, that's very close, well done."

"I need more ketchup."

"Well?" Cruella prompted her. "What do we do when we want things?"

"... Get them ourselves?"

"By George, the light at the end of your tunnel might not be that of an oncoming train after all. Go on, then."

Alexis toddled off toward the condiments station.

Cruella rubbed at the bridge of her nose with her fingertips. "Ugh, this is a _nightmare_ ..."

"I don't know," said Ursula, shrugging. "She's not dead yet. Although why on earth anyone would _deliberately_ entrust the care of a child to a person like you remains a mystery. You don't even play well with short adults."

"It was her idiot mother's idea. The nearest I can figure is the doctors must have finally struck brain the last time they liposuctioned her arse."

Ursula smirked. "What have you been telling that kid, anyway? In the bathroom she asked me which animals I could talk to and if it was true that I picked my teeth with pretty bones."

"Really? She put all that together? Cleverer than I thought ... Oh, darling, she's _five,_ and she was playing twenty thousand questions in the car. Even if she believes me, it's not like anyone's going to believe _her,_ and it was half folderol besides. And anyway what about you?" Cruella asked. "You, with the toilet thing. How did you know what she wanted?"

"I'm the fourteenth of thirty-one," Ursula said dryly. "You pick up a few things."

Cruella's eyes widened. "Gracious. Do gods produce in litters?"

"No, they just tend to ... produce. Between the wives, the concubines, and the one-night-stands ..." Ursula shrugged.

"Is it the three hearts thing?"

"The what?"

Cruella waved a hand. "Nevermind."

"Okay ... But, no, mostly it's a cultural thing."

Cruella tilted her head back and peered at Ursula through slitted eyes. "How cultural?"

The former sea witch snorted a laugh. "Okay, _you've_ subscribed to it more than I have since we got here."

Cruella was both pleased and chagrined by this answer, and sniffed accordingly. "Oh, spare me, darling, you know they've all just been ..." She gestured vaguely at the air. "... means to an end."

"And what end would that be?"

"The _front_ one. Obviously." She bit the top off of a french fry with a smug little smile.

Ursula raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "That why you're so keen on being taken from behind?"

Cruella rolled her eyes. "Oh, honestly, you're as tiresome as the spawn. Where is the little mongrel, anyway?" She cast her gaze around the cafeteria. "Alexis?" she called. " _Alexis,_ come here this instant!"

But there was no answering cry, no three feet of bouncing curls or patent leather Mary Janes scuffing the floor.

Cruella felt her blood begin ice over. " _Alexis!_ " she shouted again. The other patrons looked at her in confusion. She glanced at Ursula, who looked concerned.

As one, they stood and hurried for the doors, but the little girl was nowhere in sight or, apparently, earshot.

"Oh, shit," Cruella hissed. "Oh shit shit _shit_ ..."

"Okay, just -- don't panic," Ursula advised, placing a hand on her arm.

"Don't panic?! I _cannot lose_ this child, Ursula, that bitch daughter of his will never let me hear the end of it if I come home empty-handed!"

"Really? _That's_ the consequence you see here? -- Don't answer that. Look, just give me a second to call security and tell them what she looks like; then we'll look for her together, okay? We get at least two of these a day. Something catches a kid's eye and they just take off like flying fish at the first sight of a dolphin pod."

Cruella sighed impatiently and waved her away. "Fine, fine, yes, just hurry!"

Ursula ducked back inside the cafeteria, and Cruella folded her arms, nervously clawing at her fur and nearly jumping out of both it and her skin when her bra beeped out a text notification.

She fished out her phone, and her stomach plummeted at the sender's name.

  
"Oh of _course,_ " she groused. "Of sodding _course_ she chooses now of all times ..."

>   
>  **How is everything going?**

  
The best lies, Cruella knew, were woven around grains of truth, and so she laid pearls before swine.  
  


> _Fine. We’ve just had lunch._
> 
> **Is Alexis having a good time?**
> 
> _No, she’s entered a depressive phase and is threatening to throw herself in the shark tank.  
>  _ _Oh, wait, that’s me._
> 
> **You’re not funny**
> 
> _And you’re not a natural blonde, so I suppose that makes us even._
> 
> **Just have her home by 5**
> 
> _Fine, fine. Cow._
> 
> **Excuse me??**
> 
> _Sorry, darling, autocorrect. Ciao._   
>    
>    
> 

"Slag," Cruella muttered, slipping her phone back inside her dress. At least the dozy bitch hadn't actually phoned and wanted to speak to the whelp. Small favors.

Ursula reappeared. "All right, let's go. Don't worry, I know this place like you know the Fur Salon at Saks. We'll find her."

"How do you know there's a Fur Salon at Saks?"

"Just-- Just walk, Cru."

 

* * *

 

Back through the jellyfish forest they went, and further still, past walruses, seals and penguins who charted their progress with black, mistrustful eyes. The sharks had seen nothing; the groupers and triggerfish pointed in contradictory directions; the eels and rays all kept mum. The anemones clammed up, and the seahorses hid behind fluted fronds of kelp.

"Oh, this is hopeless!" Cruella snarled, disgustedly throwing her stole on the bench between two rows of shabby lockers in the empty female employees' changing room. They'd knocked on every single one, on the off chance Alexis had crawled inside, become locked in, and fallen asleep, but to no avail. "I knew I should have brought one of the dogs. Probably the little miscreant's been abducted or something, she's already got a damsel complex. That would be just my luck. There goes marriage number five, and do you know they never, _ever_ end in my favor? No alimony ever awarded, no assets to divide after the extent of their debts was sniffed out, and the familial squabbling if there happened to be a will, my _god,_ they'd come out of the woodwork like termites ..."

Ursula opened her mouth, but the brake was off and Cruella was already rolling, the rasp in her voice growing more pronounced as she spoke, drilling into deep wells of sulfurous animosity.

"You know, even here, darling, even in this miserable, pedestrian, utterly prosaic little _shithole_ of a realm, we're still cursed. Here, where they have dictators who make Regina look like an unimaginative amateur in the arena of mass atrocity, who manage to die of old age before they ever succumb to bankruptcy or military coups. Here, where even those lauded as heroes are up to their necks in sex scandals and illegitimate children and drug allegations and fucking corporate fucking theft. A whole godforsaken world running on the principles of villainy and still we get the short end of the stick, every single bloody time. I _hate_ it! I _hate_ what this place has done to us!"

Her voice cracked under twenty-odd years' weight of chronic frustration, and she turned away, hands on her hips, swallowing hard.

Behind her, Ursula sighed, and after a moment Cruella felt the gentle pressure of a hand running down the length of her back, repetitively lifting and smoothing as she would the puffed fur of an agitated cat.

"Come on," Ursula urged, ever the more levelheaded between the pair of them. Cruella the flare and Ursula the fizzle. "Cool off. Now is not the time for this shit."

"No," Cruella agreed, only halfway sarcastic. "No, it never is, is it?" Nonetheless, she found herself calming under Ursula's ministrations. The tension in her shoulders eased, and the ache in her throat subsided. Strange how the one person in either world who could cause her most guarded feelings to slip their leads was the one best suited to collaring all the other ones back where they belonged.

She reached back and caught Ursula's hand as it rose to make another pass. Any other person would think she meant them to stop; Ursula stepped forward and slipped her free arm around Cruella's waist. Pressed a kiss to the side of her neck as Cruella pressed one to her warm, familiar palm.

"... Your fingers positively _reek_ of fish," Cruella groused, and felt Ursula smile briefly against her skin.

"Jealous?"

"Ha. 'Pitying' is the word if she smells like that, darling. How desperate my absences must make you."

"Yes, well, ever since your lowborn ass defiled my delicate royal tastebuds, I've had no choice but to slum it in between rendezvous. You've ruined me for women of actual breeding."

Cruella clicked her tongue and nipped at one of Ursula's offensively-scented knuckles.

"Sea cow."

"Tramp." Ursula returned the bite, pointedly choosing the auricle of Cruella's left ear as her target. "So have we regrouped?"

Cruella sighed, at once glad that Alexis' disappearing act had enabled them a few moments of privacy, and resentful that they was being cut short for the very same reason.

"We have," she concurred. "Well, almost--"

Cruella twisted around and kissed her, the first one quick, the second as deep and rich as she knew how to make it. It wasn't bruising, but it hurt, the same way everything hurt here: a flavor of grief folded into every action, even the most exhilarating ones, coarsening the soft and bittering the sweet.

Had they been more valiant people, it might have been unbearable, like they needed to ration what light they could scrounge for fear of their fuel running out. Cruella wondered if they weren't somehow saved by their own avarice -- that in reaching for everything, they had learned the value of taking whatever they could get their hands on until the next opportunity arose. They lit the wick and let it burn high, and knew the flame not only by its light and warmth, but by the feel of the wax that dried on their skin in the dark, and by the blisters beneath that, and the scars beneath those. Strata of mementos that held in the heat long after there was none left to bask in.

"... All on, now," she murmured when they broke, then cleared her throat and pulled away, furtively slipping Ursula's hair elastic from her ponytail as she did so. She retrieved her stole and wrapped it again about her elbows. "Let us recommence the hunt."

Ursula stood dazed for a moment, then shook her head, and followed a few paces behind.

"Tally-fucking-ho ..."

 

* * *

 

Cruella checked her phone for the time -- nearly three o'clock.

"Bugger," she swore under her breath. So much for making it back by five, not with rush hour traffic looming on the horizon. Susan would be annoyed.

That was, Cruella felt, the one bright spot in this whole mess.

Well, that and locker rooms.

Probably she should be summoning the authorities by now. Any sensible, concerned step-grandmother would have done, Cruella was sure, but she was only one of those things, and a reluctant one at that. Like hell was she about to make her headache worse by calling a bunch of blue-clad donut donkeys with delusions of heroism in to ask her accusatory questions, stand around, and attempt to look important. Besides, none of them could outmatch Cruella herself -- or Ursula, for that matter -- when it came to poses of dissatisfied hauteur; as far as she was concerned, she was doing their work _for_ them this very instant, the incompetent fools.

Ursula, for the moment, was sitting atop the bench wall of a decorative planter, poring over a map of the aquarium and crossing off all of the places they'd already searched. Easily three quarters of the exhibits had been gone through with lines of black ink.

"Okay, the Aquatheater next," said the former sea witch. "A place I actually fucking hate. Big crowds of stupid people cheering on the humiliation of a predator made to play court jester. Don't get me wrong, most whales are elitist assholes, but what these people do to them ..." She shook her head, nostrils flaring. "Ripping a pack animal away from its family, away from its home, putting it in solitary confinement and then measuring its intelligence by how willing it is to perform tasks that serve zero fucking purpose outside the entertainment of a bunch of guppy shit fucking yuppie assholes, and not even a decent seal carcass at the end because god forbid the audience be made to feel uncomfortable about the dietary order of the natural world. It makes me _sick,_ " she spat.

Cruella sat down next to her, and rested a discreet hand at the small of her back.

"The fish are one thing. They're like humans: as long as their basic needs are met and the room vaguely resembles a reef, they couldn't really give a damn if they're swimming in circles. But whales? Whales are like us. It's more than just a change of scenery to them, it's -- you can't just strip them of everything they've ever known and then expect them to ..."

"To take it lying down?"

"To thrive."

Cruella's fingers curled around her stole. She chewed at the inside of her cheek.

"We'll make it quick, then," she said quietly, already standing.

Ursula looked caught between exasperation and guilt. "Cru--"

"Ursula!"

They turned as a young woman dressed in the chinos and polo shirt uniform of the aquarium's customer-oriented staff approached them at a jog.

"Jimmy said you were looking for a kid? Five years old, brown hair, yellow dress, Alexis ... something-fancy?"

"Feinberg-Kilduff," said Cruella.

" _Gesundheit,_ " said the girl. "Anyway, Marvin's got her over at security. Noticed she'd been standing at the stingray pool on her own for a while."

"Oh thank god," Cruella sighed, shoulders dropping in relief. "Now I know she's safe I can _fucking kill her_ ..."

Ursula thanked the now somewhat alarmed-looking girl -- Melanie, apparently -- and told her she would escort Mrs. Feinberg to security.

"Oh, and -- Milton's been wondering where you are," apparently-Melanie added with a sympathetic wince. "You never clocked back in after your break?"

"Shit," Ursula muttered. "All right, I'll find him when I've finished with this. Thanks, Mel."

Melanie nodded and trotted off. Ursula sighed and ran a hand through loose blonde waves.

"... The hell happened to my hair tie?"

Cruella surreptitiously adjusted the bracelet on her left wrist.

"Who's Milton?" she asked, as much to change the subject as out of curiosity.

Ursula's lips pursed as though she'd just tasted something sour. "My manager. Looks like an overgrown pufferfish, worships at the altar of bureaucracy."

"Hmmm." Cruella narrowed her eyes. She had about as much fondness for bureaucracy as she had for heroism. "He won't sack you for this, will he?"

Ursula shook her head. "No. Probably I'll just get a demerit on my next eval."

She didn't sound terribly certain, though.

"Introduce me," Cruella ordered. "After we've collected the runt."

"Cruella, no, that's really not necessary--"

"No, honestly, I insist."

"I don't need your fucking charity, okay? Never have, never will."

"It's not _charity,_ it's just ... I'm the one indebted to _you_ for today, for goodness' sake, and I will not have that debt result in any further deterioration of my own aesthetic sensibilities the next time we see one another. Darling, I'd tear the bin liner off your body and shag you senseless in a cardboard box in the middle of Prospect Park, but if it's within my means to avoid such a fate, then I'm bloody well going to."

"My god, you haven't at all lost your ability to sweet-talk a lady, have you?"

"What lady? Come now, at the very least point him out to me, or I'll find himself and _really_ make a scene. And you've _seen_ my scenes, darling."

Ursula glared at her. "You know, I really do hate you sometimes."

"And I you," Cruella solemnly pledged. "With every fiber in my closet."

"Don't you mean your heart?"

Cruella shrugged. "The closet's worth more."

Ursula snorted. "I won't argue that one."

 

* * *

 

Cruella silently rehearsed her disciplinary monologue on their way to security. It would begin with her personal favorite of "How _dare_ you," followed by a particularly pleasing diatribe on the maternal failings of Susan, and then conclude with a threat of obedience school, complete, if necessary, with a few well-aggrandized descriptions of the more disreputable corrective measures occasionally employed therein. It wouldn't be her best work, but limited as she was by nuisance legalities and no great desire to hunt for husband number six just yet, it would be a satisfactory enough effort -- or it would have been, had she managed to more than open her mouth and inhale upon entering the aquarium's foundling depot before thirty pounds of yellow taffeta barreled into her legs, knocking her back into Ursula with a startled "Oomph!"

"I'm sorryyyyyy!!" wailed the taffeta. "I didn't mean to get lost but people were feeding a bird and then, and then a man had balloons and I wanted one but then you were gone and I couldn't find you and please don't tell Mommy, _please!_ "

Cruella looked at Ursula, flabbergasted by both the affection and having been cast in the role of potential ally by anyone still in possession of puppy fat.

Ursula shrugged.

The two rent-a-cops leaning against the desk stared at her with a kind of dull expectancy.

"Er," said Cruella. "... There, there." She patted the child awkwardly on the head. Gave her a halfhearted scritch behind the ears. "Enough. _Enough,_ I said. It's done now. I won't ..." She sighed. "I won't tell your mother."

There was a wet-sounding sniffle from the vicinity of her knees. "Promise?"

"What is it with you and promises? I said I wouldn't. And what did I tell you about crying?"

Alexis responded with another sniffle, but seemed to be calming down. She released Cruella's legs and took a step back, face leaking from three out of five possible places.

Cruella grimaced.

"Oh for ..." she grumbled, and before she could chart her actions, grabbed two tissues from a box on the desk, crouched down and set about mopping up the spill. "There," she scolded, "do you see what I mean? How are you supposed to look imposing with blotchy cheeks and a mucus mustache? It's disgraceful."

Too late, she felt the eyes upon her, and glanced back to find Ursula watching her from just inside the threshold with an expression of baffled amusement.

"Don't look at me like that," Cruella snapped. "You're not the one who has to be seen with her."

Ursula held up her hands but gave a little cough that sounded remarkably alike to the word "blackmail."

Cruella glared daggers, then returned her attention to the _other_ child.

"All on now, are you?" she demanded.

Alexis nodded yieldingly.

"Good. I hope you found Ahab or whoever it was, because we're not larking about an extra two hours to make up for the time you’ve wasted."

"I found him," Alexis confirmed. "And I found Mr. Ray, too, but no one was riding on his back."

"School let out early today," said Ursula.

"And so did you, I gather," said a voice from behind her.

Ursula closed her eyes, and Cruella stood up as a short, portly man entered the room. He wore the cheap button-up shirt and wrinkle-free slacks of the managerial peasantry, and the bare scalp inside the horseshoe of hair that ringed his balding head was spiked here and there with individual gray strands that apparently thought height could compensate for scarcity.

The infamous Milton, no doubt.

His wide, dark mouth resembled nothing so much as a pair of warring earthworms, and in his piggish little eyes Cruella recognized an all too familiar vindictive paranoia, that of an individual well aware that their ambition outweighed their ability. The thought of Ursula being subordinate to such a creature made her hackles raise and her stomach turn. More than Ursula's tatty attire, more than the dismal little apartment and the world-weary shadows that grew increasingly more prevalent around her eyes, it was _this_ that disgusted Cruella most about the other woman's decline -- but it wasn't Ursula who was the target of her rage.

Indeed, at that moment, Cruella would have died to spare the former sea witch this humiliation, for Cruella knew what it was to feel trapped and powerless and at the mercy of another's irrational whims. Ursula had been exploited but not terrorized by her father, and before that had been instilled with enough sense of self and worth and purpose that the abuse had altered the shape but not the constituents of that foundation. She laid low here because she knew exactly who she was and where she belonged, and this land applied to neither. For all it had shaken and undermined her, it would, in the end, be rendered inconsequential.

Cruella, by contrast, was a suspension bridge, held up in large part by the cables she had strung to counterbalance a base too infrequently shored up to ensure its stability. From her diamond collars and ruby cuffs to the furs on her back, even here she wore her power quite literally on her sleeve. A little gauche, Maleficent had once called it; a little New Magic, but Cruella hadn't given a damn and still didn't. Her shackles meant her freedom and she refused to be without them, wherever the hell fate saw fit to send her.

Even ordinary, Cruella remained armored, and the enemy she now faced on Ursula's behalf was one she knew well how to at least muzzle, if turning him into a leather jacket wasn't currently in the cards.

"Are you this woman's supervisor?" she asked, as the word "superior" would have been an ugly lie.

"I am," said Milton, puffing up as he took in her bearing, her finery, her cultivated voice.

Cruella affected an ingratiating smile. "Oh, I can't thank you enough for keeping such wonderful staff, Mr. ...?"

"Curry, Milton Curry." He held out his hand.

Cruella clasped hers together in mock-prayerful appreciation.

"Mr. Milton Curry," she said. People did so love to hear their own names repeated back at them. "Cruella Feinberg. Lovely to meet you. As I was saying, you're doing a splendid job with your employees. I was utterly frantic when my little ..." She couldn't say the word, she _couldn't._ "... _Alexis_ ran off -- children these days, you know how it is -- and wouldn't you know it, this marvelous woman absolutely refused to leave my side until she'd been found. It's not even her department, as I understand it, but if this is the sort of dedication you're inspiring in even your behind-the-scenes workers, I must say, darling, I'm tremendously impressed."

Milton was going red, from his dimpled chin to the tips of his small, oddly circular ears.

"Ah, w-well," he stammered, "we do strive for that level of commitment here at the New York Aquarium."

"And indeed you're achieving it," Cruella gushed. "Why, as long as you continue to employ people like darling Ursula here, I may have to speak with my husband about making a donation to this fine facility of yours."

"Oh, I -- we -- would highly value your patronage, Mrs. Feinberg!" His smile was nauseatingly sycophantic as he turned from her to Ursula, who looked as though she were straddling the verge between wanting to be sick and cracking up at the whole supercilious display. "We'll of course write off today as a special case. Just keep up the good work when you clock in tomorrow."

Ursula smiled tightly. "I'll do my best. _Milt._ "

Oh thank god. Cruella wasn't sure she could have controlled herself had Ursula called the idiot "sir."

"See that you do, see that you do," said Milton, and raised his hand as if to administer a condescending pat to Ursula's shoulder.

_Touch her and die,_ Cruella thought.

Luckily, Ursula's own warning gaze and minute shift backward seemed enough to remind him of the section on sexual harassment in his corporate policy manual, and the hand rerouted to smooth self-consciously over the tonsured pate of his head.

"Well, I, I should be getting back to work," he said. "Morale is the one thing that gets its boost from the top down, after all."

"Mm, you're quite right, darling." said Cruella. "And thank you again for your administrative excellence. Should you hear from a woman named Andrea, that's my husband's secretary; she'll inform you as to the specifics of our impending contribution."

"Oh, it's been my pleasure, Mrs. Feinberg, my pleasure! I hope to see you and this lovely young lady here frequently!" He winked at Alexis, who hid behind Cruella's legs.

Sensible girl.

"I'm _not_ thanking you for that," Ursula told her as they walked down the corridor that would return them to the public portion of the aquarium. "He's going to be worse than he ever was, now that he thinks his methods have been sanctioned by the oh-so-illustrious gentry."

Cruella scoffed. "You've been playing the pauper for far too long, darling, if you've forgot how these people work. Just tell him I invited you to lunch. He'll be seething with envy, but so long as he believes we've a personal connection, he won't dare try anything."

"That's not what I'm talking about."

Cruella frowned. "Then what is?"

Ursula shook her head, and sighed with the sort of jaded disappointment she'd once reserved for incompetent underlings. "Just forget it, okay? You go back to your life, and I'll go back to mine."

It was a brush-off in which Cruella felt the sting of a blow.

"Gladly," she muttered, taking out her phone and bringing up Stuart's number. "Bring the car around, we're leaving." She gave Ursula a disdainful once-over as she took Alexis firmly by the wrist. "Enjoy your Aquatheater, darling. I'll cheer on your performance from the grandstands."

She steered Alexis toward the aquarium's main exit, and didn't slow her flounce until the Rolls was in sight, and Alexis began to complain about the tightness of her grip. She released the child with a sigh and an automatic "Sorry, darling," that she was too flustered to revoke.

Stuart buckled Alexis into her car seat, and for the first time since their arrival, Cruella remembered her flask, still untouched and gartered to her thigh. She started to hitch up her skirt to retrieve it, but changed her mind, and stared broodingly out the window as they started back for Great Neck.

"Are you hungry again?" asked a small voice to her right.

Cruella fixed the child with one of her more more menacing glares.

Alexis sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and stared artlessly back. She rummaged for a moment in the little lace pocket of her dress, then held out her hand.

"Mr. Marvin gave me Swedish Fish. You can have some if you want."

Cruella looked at the cheerful blue-and-yellow packet of fish-shaped red gummi candy, and gritted her teeth as she felt her ire spring a leak and start to collapse. She'd once finagled Ursula into buying a box, and Sweden had held a place on the other woman's shit list ever since the first bite. She wouldn't even set foot in Ikea on principle.

"No, thank you, darling. I've had more than my fill of fish for today."

"Are you mad at Miss Ursula?"

Cruella chewed thoughtfully at the inside of her cheek, and had just opened her mouth to respond when her bra beeped again. Fucking Susan, no doubt, probably demanding GPS coordinates of their current location and an ETA ...

But it wasn’t Susan at all.

 

> **I know you’re not thriving**

 

"... No," she said. "No, I'm not mad, I'm just ..." _Sorry. I'm sorry._

"Good," commended the child. "I like her. She's nice."

"I wouldn't go that far," Cruella contravened, thumbing a reply. "But all told, she is a pretty stand-up lady." She hit send.

 

> _I know you’re not lying down_

 

" _Heaps_ of style," Cruella continued. "You can get away with clashing patterns, impropriety, even spotty functionality, so long as you've found that one seamless cut that wears like a second skin."

And Cruella had nothing if not a deep and abiding fondness for second skins.

She deleted the conversation and tucked her phone away, and thought of the sable that would be waiting for her when she got home.

She glanced at the child, who was humming happily to herself as she made two Swedish Fish swim to one another and kiss.

It had been worth it, she supposed, although Richard would be getting nothing less than an earful of the opposite, because an encore was absolutely out of the question.

She stretched taut the hair elastic looped around her left wrist, and started plotting her next jaunt down to Brooklyn.


End file.
